Bit of an old thread, and this is my first post here, but I made this first post specifically to say that I'm one of these users. I don't refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 on principle (I have a work and a personal laptop that are both windows 10), but my old desktop, the one with the firewire card that I need to use my Edirol FA-101, just doesn't seem beefy enough to justify trying to get windows 10 to work on it. So I set it up to dual boot with Linux Mint earlier this year, and just yesterday I set up yet another partition and put AV Linux on there, to see if I can get away with removing Windows 7 completely and just use that (I don't really see the point in keeping it now, due to the aforementioned windows 10 laptops, and the fact that I'm only really hanging onto Windows 7 because I've already got it to accept the FA-101)
Amazingly, on AV Linux, Ardour recognised the FA-101 instantly and without any setup at all (I remember having immense difficulty getting it initially working properly on Windows despite the fact that Windows is what the drivers are made for). I've yet to do any proper recording in it yet but I'll see how this goes (it's worth pointing out at this point that I've not recorded anything for the last 3-4 years or so anyway, so I'm under no illusion that experimenting with another OS is a viable option for anyone really serious about recording. The stakes just happen to be particularly low for me, so it was worth a try). In fairness, AV Linux wasn't a complete shot in the dark on my part, I'd googled something like "Linux DAW FA-101" and in those results I came across a post where someone mentioned that AV Linux supported the FA-101 natively, I just wanted to try it as it seemed too good to be true.
While I'm not an expert programmer my day job does involve a fair bit of dabbling in coding, so while I've had a few issues on Linux so far (such as the fact that Linux Mint 19.3 seemed determined to put my wireless card in power saver mode, i.e. turned off and unable to connect to wi-fi) I've been able to fix them and have considered it almost therapeutic whereas a lot of my non-tech literate friends would have had a completely different experience.
Oh, it's also worth pointing out that the windows 7 install on my desktop is buggy as hell. If ever I try to install something, I have a roughly 50/50 chance of the installation actually succeeding (e.g. I recently tried to install ESET internet security, and it just ain't happening). So while it might sound simpler just stick with Win 7, that wasn't really working for me - and I'd tried repairing it. The options I was down to were either to completely reinstall Windows, or give Linux a go 😛
